Early friendships add new dimensions to children’s sense of who they are and where they belong
The importance of friends Children’s experience of both having and being friends plays a critical part in their acquisition of social identity and selfhood. (James, 1993, p. 201)
Children’s scope for making friends, the numbers, character and intimacy of their friendships, and the extent to which they are able to decide who are their friends vary greatly. In Western societies, friendships become important as children make progressive transitions from the more or less closed world of their immediate family into the extended family and community, often into group care settings, and then into school. While interactions with family members remain significant, those with friends and peers offer new possibilities for self-categorisation and identification. Children who have interacted freely in the community with siblings and others of different ages, of the opposite sex, or of different ethnic groups, may learn to select playmates from children of the same age, sex and culture when they find themselves in preschool centres or settings. Peer relations are not always positive in their impact on children’s sense of self, but successful friendships can enhance self-esteem and lay the foundations for future encounters with others. Friendship is most successful when it is mutually conceived and created, and reciprocated (Dunn, 2004). Even very young children seek to develop interpersonal relationships and affiliations with each other and with members of their peer group (Laursen and Hartup, 2002). Young children value the same friendship dimensions of intimacy, support, trust and mutuality as do older children and adults (Dunn, 2004; James, 1993). Friendships are complex to build and maintain. Shared pretend play is an important resource for developing the emotional and moral qualities of friendship (Dunn, 2004) and allows children to experiment with a range of social roles and identities. As children participate in roleplay they acquire a sense of themselves as future adults and future citizens, as well as experiencing an enhanced sense of their identity as children. An additional resource for bilingual children is the switching between languages as a way of managing their play negotiations (Cromdal, 2001). Susan Danby, Professor of Early Childhood, Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
• Children’s first experience in out-of-home settings provides them with opportunities to develop new aspects of their identity, in particular through forming friendships. • Friendships are important for children, even very young children, and adults. Friends help each other understand the world in which they live. • Friendships may lead to new self-categorisations, including a stronger sense of the self as a child of a particular sex, ethnicity and age.
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